“Did you hate him so much?” Selene asked; and Nightingale’s face darkened.
“You’re not the one he betrayed,” she said.
“I know.” Selene thought of Morningstar; now lying dead and cold somewhere in the bowels of Silverspires. “But he did it for the good of the House.”
“And that excuses anything?” Nightingale turned. Light streamed out of her, making her a living beacon against the churning of the darkened skies. “Shall I tell you what they did to me in Hawthorn, Selene? Every cut of the knife, every broken bone, every wound that wouldn’t close…”
“No more than what Morningstar did,” Selene said. The cells had gone dusty in her time; because she wasn’t Morningstar. Because she wasn’t hard enough, and look where it had got them. “I grieve for what happened to you, Nightingale, but it doesn’t give you the right to destroy us.”
“Of course it does. The House is based on lies, Selene, on selling its own dependents to further its own interests. Do you truly believe you deserve to survive?”
Justice. Blood. Revenge. Had she been so naive, once? “All the Houses are the same.”
“Then perhaps no House deserves to survive.” It was Philippe’s argument; and Philippe’s face, closed and arrogant; and the same desire she’d felt then, to smash his high-mindedness into wounding shards.
“And that would be your mission?”
Nightingale’s face was serene. “Who knows? I don’t owe you anything, Selene. Least of all accounts.”
“No,” Selene said. “But I owe you something, Nightingale. Excuses.”
“You made them. I have accepted them, but they change nothing. You’re not Morningstar; of course you’re not. No one can be, Selene. No one can loom as large as he did; no one can hold an entire room to attention by merely stepping into it.” Her face was soft then; some of the intensity smoothed away, as if she recalled happier times — as if they had ever existed. Morningstar hadn’t been a kind master. “And you certainly couldn’t hold the House he built together.”
Selene bristled. “I am head of the House.” Within her, almost nothing; the magic sunken down into cold ashes, the protections almost stripped away. The House was dead, or dying; and she had presided over its demise; had failed to see the danger until it was too late.
“Oh, don’t blame yourself.” Nightingale shrugged. “He took us all, didn’t he? Saw something in us and tried to remake us into more than we were. Some of us broke; and all of us failed. All disappointments.”
She was his heir. The head of the House. But of course she had always known that it was solely because there was no one else; because he was gone and she was the latest apprentice. There had been no designation, no transfer of power; merely everyone looking to her as the nearest thing they still had to a leader.
And what a leader she’d been: truly unworthy of anything he had left her, a child playing with adult tools and burning herself.
“Of course it wasn’t you. It was him and his standards no one could live up to. He was firstborn, Selene; the oldest among you, the first Fallen. What made you think you were worthy to even follow in his footsteps? I forged my own path; so should you.”
“A path of revenge and madness,” Selene said. “Look where it got you.”
“Indeed. Look where it got me.” Nightingale turned, slowly, taking in the ruined cathedral drowned in a mass of tangled roots and branches; scattering leaves from her white shift over the cracked stone of the parvis; ending her rotation so that she was once more facing the scattered remnants of the House in the square. Selene could see figures moving, picking themselves up from the devastation: Emmanuelle helping a limping Philippe, Javier rallying the guards — but they would be too late. It was here; it was now; just her and Nightingale, the last two surviving students of Morningstar facing each other.
And of course Nightingale was right. Of course she was a failure; of course her fears had always been right. She was a small candle to Morningstar’s bright star; a drop of water to the churning ocean; a fallen leaf to an oak tree — a pale reflection of the Fallen who had taught her, unable to even hold the House safe; to hold it together against all dangers; and, when the time came, finding her own ruthlessness too late, much too late.
Of course.
* * *
WITHIN the hollow of the tree, everything lay in shadow — none of the radiant light from outside, simply a strong smell of churned earth; and a heaviness in the air, as if before a storm. If Madeleine raised her eyes, she could see the stars through the top of the column: the trunk itself was merged roots with a thin coating of thinner bark between them, a wall peppered with holes where the bark hadn’t quite closed.
Just enough light to go by.
Madeleine headed to the ruined throne, circling the gaping hole of the entrance to the crypt. Then she sat by the side of the throne, thoughtfully staring at the mirror.
Emmanuelle hadn’t been very precise in her instructions, because she hadn’t known how — because she’d guessed some things about the spell, but not enough to understand its true workings. But Madeleine remembered something else — the dance of Ngoc Bich’s fingers on the rim, back in the dragon kingdom, a pattern that held the key to opening this.
A sealed artifact, Ngoc Bich had said. Madeleine ran her hands over the surface of the mirror. There was that familiar spike of malice, but also something else: a rising warmth, a feeling she knew all too well. The imprint of trapped Fallen breath. Whoever had helped Nightingale lay this in the cathedral had contributed to the spell that had cursed the House.
A sealed mirror — an artifact infused with Fallen breath and Fallen magic, the same as the ones Madeleine had handled for decades.
She didn’t need to destroy it: merely to open it, and empty it of all its magic until it was once more inert and harmless, the curse defanged and spent into nothingness.
It was sealed, of course — Nightingale would not have made this so easy. Sealed and locked, and Madeleine hadn’t been able to open it, back when Isabelle had handed it to her. Ngoc Bich had said they shouldn’t try; that it would avail them nothing. But Madeleine was there, in the birthplace of the curse, in its only point of weakness. This might, of course, not work at all; but what choice did she have?
Madeleine’s fingers moved on the rim in slow, half-remembered gestures — as Ngoc Bich’s fingers had once done, the first steps in unlocking it — seeking the place that kept it all together.
* * *
“GIVE it up, Selene. No one will ever be Morningstar. You know it.”
Yes, she did know it. No one would build the House from nothing; or the city, if legend had it right; no one would ever loom as large as he had done, before he died.
From where she was, Selene could see Emmanuelle, could guess at what she was thinking. You’re not giving up now, are you?
Nightingale smiled. “See, Selene? I will leave you to your ruins. Unless you want to fight? Your dependent did, and it brought her nothing.” She turned away, and started going down the stairs; planning, no doubt, to leave the island and strand them all in the middle of nowhere.
Isabelle. She knew more than Isabelle; but in the end, it would probably avail her nothing. Nightingale had the power of the entire House behind her now; the magic that had enabled her to defeat Isabelle and Morningstar. Because she had asked them to go; because she had known, all along, that this was where it ended.
She ought to have grieved; but there was no space in her heart anymore — nothing but a growing, roiling anger. The storm is coming, the Furies had whispered in the crypt.